Genre: Adventure    

Developer & Publisher: The Fullbright Team              

Released: August 15, 2013             

Requirements: OS: Windows 7, SP1 or higher

Processor: 1.80 Ghtz

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: DirectX 10 Video card with 512 GB VRAM

Storage: 2 GB available space

By flotsam

Gone Home

The Fullbright Company

This is from a while ago and I know I played it sometime back then, but never wrote about it. I remember thinking it was not like things I usually played but had enjoyed, but much more than that eludes me. I confess to having forgotten about it until an internet rabbit hole brought it to my attention recently. Which enticed me to play it again.

I am glad I did.

It’s June 7 1995, at just past 1 am. You (Katie Greenbriar) have arrived at the family home after a year travelling overseas, but instead of a warm welcome there is no one there. A note pinned to the door sparks a notion that something is wrong. Once inside the house, that feeling only grows.

Self described as an interactive exploration simulation, Gone Home wants you to rummage in all the details of the lives of the people who live here. The more drawers and cupboards you open, the more documents you read, the more objects you examine, the more complete will be the reconstruction of those lives.

What you learn you will pull together from all sorts of material. Letters and journals are obvious sources, also postcards, invoices, and post-it notes, but other bits and pieces of life (a cassette tape playlist, a bookmark, a photo, an empty bottle or can, a ticket stub, perhaps even a condom) might provide or contribute to a relevant insight. Fitting the different pieces together and drawing those insights is a constant, not just because of the order in which you come across things - you will usually have an incomplete picture, with gaps in what you know - but also because not everything screams “this goes here.” So too things don’t necessarily fit neatly, hinting of stuff outside or overlaying the edges of the narrative jigsaw. It is about people’s lives after all, and they can be messy and untidy things.

It isn’t just about the big picture. Much of what you find might be e.g., witty or heartfelt or sarcastic in and of itself, while at the same time providing another little detail into who the relevant person is. Those details are similarly varied; they might be endearing or off-putting or something else entirely. It’s an intriguing pastiche, with even the most mundane objects capable of adding something.

Having said that, most of the objects I examined were just objects, but it didn’t stop me. The promise of an insight, now or much later (perhaps I would learn something that would make this seemingly innocuous object so much more?) was ever present.

Accessing some items will generate an audio log, which will be sorted in chronological order within your journal. You can replay these at any time (just press the’3’ or ‘J’ key to access), unlike the ‘documents’ you encounter. You don’t take those with you, so while you can read them again you have to go back to where you found them.

Which suggests that these audio logs are the main thread, and I would agree in terms of them being the spine that runs through things. They focus on, and are narrated by, Katie’s younger sister Sam, who is responsible for the note that first confronts you when you enter the house.

Just to be clear, these logs aren’t a particular type of item that is lying around. All sorts of objects might trigger one to play.

You use a combination of the mouse and keyboard, the mouse used to interact with the world and ‘steer’ your first-person perspective, the keyboard for everything else. WASD gets you around but in conjunction with the mouse the W key is really all you will need. As well as your journal you can access a map that is added to as you explore, and an inventory which only ever has a small number of items. Having an item (e.g., the necessary key) will cause the locked door to open with no further action needed by you.

There are one or two actual puzzles (a combination lock is one) and you also need to find a few things in order to trigger access to some hidden areas of the house. Things you can interact with will be highlighted in response to the cursor.

Ambient sounds and a melancholic soundtrack (which even without turning down was often only just there and sometimes not at all) underpin your exploration, punctuated by riot-girl tracks you can play by inserting cassette tapes into the various players you come across. Lights might flicker (if you turn them on) and thunder can be heard, lending a touch of tension to exploring an empty house. The voice narration is top-notch.

You can reach the end without having nearly found everything there is to find, including Sam’s audio logs. As the game exclusively autosaves and only has one save point (you re-enter the game by choosing ‘resume’ from the menu), loading an earlier save is not available to you should you want to try and find anything you missed. However, if once the game ends you choose ‘resume’, you will be back at the trigger point for the ending, allowing you to walk away and explore the house further.

I Googled after the event and have about eight audio logs still to find, and fully intend to do so. I want Sam’s full story, and I am sure there are other elements of the lives of others to be discerned. There is also a safe I haven’t opened and my inventory suggests there are a few more items I could find, and there are no doubt other things to do given the unachieved Steam achievements.

You can also play with a maker’s commentary, which I will do once I have decided to start a new game.

It is though ultimately about the stories the house contains, and I thoroughly enjoyed unearthing those belonging to the Greenbriars (individually and collectively). It reminded me of Edith Finch, and is worth your attention if these sorts of games are to your liking.

I played on:

OS: Windows 11, 64 Bit

Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz

RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB

Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB

 

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